Eye image via Shutterstock

Eye floaters — or muscae volitantes, Latin for “hovering flies” — are those tiny, oddly shaped objects that sometimes appear in your vision, most often when you’re looking at the sky on a sunny day. They look like spots, or a squishy little amoeba, and drift aimlessly around in your field of vision. Try to get a fix on one, though, and it seems to disappear.

(more…)

In this video, YouTube user nik282000 shows us what happens when lithium metal burns — in slow motion. Using a 300fps camera (10x slower than realtime) and a macro lens, we can see the process of lithium burning, passing through several bizarre phases until it resembles a hunk of charred cauliflower. Have a look!

Note: things don’t really get cool until just before the 2-minute mark. Give it time.

If you want a (shaky) view of what this looks like in realtime, check out some guy burning lithium and don’t try it at home — the fumes and touching the lithium are dangerous.

See also: 30,000 Pounds of Sodium + Lake = Massive Explosion.

Woodpecker image via Shutterstock

If you or I bump our heads hard enough on a hunk of wood, it might smart for a while. But to get through an average day, a woodpecker might ram its head into a tree trunk at a speed of 6 or 7 meters per second some 12,000 times without seeming the least bit bothered by it.

Lucky for them. The life of a woodpecker revolves around slamming its face into trees at high speeds. It’s how they feed themselves most of the time, excavating bugs from the wood when fruit or nuts aren’t available. It’s also how many of them make their homes, hollowing out a space in a trunk some 8 inches wide and up to two feet deep to make a nest. This is the niche they’ve come to fill, and over millions of years of doing it, they’ve evolved some intense headgear to prevent brain damage, cracked skulls and retinal detachment.

To figure out what all goes into woodpecker head trauma prevention, a team of Chinese scientists took a look at the birds’ heads, brains and behavior in several different ways last year. (more…)

Quicksand is a staple hazard of adventure movies, TV shows and video games. Whenever a minor character needs to be killed off quickly, the hero needs someone to rescue, or danger needs to be introduced without calling the villain in, quicksand is there to fulfill the task and swallow an explorer whole. Conveniently, there’s always a pool of pasty goo sitting around somewhere, usually perfectly circular and somewhat hidden from the characters’ view. This shouldn’t come as a shock, but real quicksand isn’t exactly how Hollywood makes it out to be.

(more…)

In 2009, students at Cambridge University genetically engineered E. coli bacteria, adding DNA sequences in order to create colors visible to the naked eye (standard E. coli does not have a pigment). The students called this new strain E. chromi, and it has limited uses today, primarily related to detecting pollution or other chemicals — if the bacteria detects a chemical, it changes color.

That’s all well and good, but how do we take this and go nuts with it, creating a Terminator-like dystopian horrorscape? I’m so glad you asked. In the short film below (which is largely fictional), an example is given in which an advanced form of this bacteria could be ingested by humans, and it could then identify illnesses within the GI tract…which you’d learn about after pooping a rainbow of bacteria-laden diagnostic material. (Oh, were you eating? I should have warned you.)

I should emphasize: this is a speculative art project based on some limited real-world science. But who among us does not dream of a poop-rainbow-filled tomorrow? I, for one, welcome our new bacterial overlords.

(Via Waxy.) See also: io9 on Daisy Ginsberg, one of the artists behind this project.

Paper cut image via Shutterstock

There are a couple things at play here, some involving the paper, some involving your skin.

For one thing, what part of your body comes in contact with paper the most? Right, the majority of paper cuts happen on the fingers and hands. Your hands are pretty complex sensory instruments, and they’re absolutely jam-packed with nerve fibers called nociceptors. These guys sense temperature, pressure and pain, and there are more of them per square inch in your hands and fingers than most other parts of your body. Injuries there are noticed much more than similar injuries elsewhere. The same small paper cut on a less nerve-dense area, such as, say, your leg, won’t send nearly as many pain signals to your brain.

(more…)

As a little light science-ish fare for Friday, here’s a TED Talk in which David Blaine explains his quest to hold his breath for a really, really long time. He goes through a variety of possible “trick” techniques (none of which worked), and discusses his much-publicized failure to escape from handcuffs during his “Drowned Alive” feat. But then he gets to the interesting stuff — a seemingly credible story of how he trained to do a sustained breath-hold after breathing pure oxygen. This is a different kind of record than the standard breath-hold, and Blaine did manage to break a Guinness World Record for “static apnea.” What makes the story so credible is that other people actually had similar records, and Blaine’s static apnea record has since been broken by Tom Sietas (the guy who held the record before Blaine and inspired Blaine’s attempt). If only a few guys in the world are working on this record, it seems plausible that Blaine could make it happen.

But while this talk seems credible, it’s interesting how we interact with what Blaine says. Can we ever trust him to tell the truth? Probably not: he’s a magician, and deception is his M.O. Then again, he could choose to simply tell the truth once in a while. It’s impossible for us to know for sure, and that strange balance between “Huh, he seems to be making sense here” versus “Yeah, but he’s David Blaine and untrustworthy” makes for a fun twenty-minute video. Have a look, and let me know whether you believe him.

Content note: Part of this video might make you gag. Blaine discusses a “rebreather” made from a “Home Depot” plastic tube, and proceeds to show video of the insertion of this device down his throat; this video may be real or it may be a trick. In any case, you might want to look away during that video clip, as it is truly kind of grim and gross. (This section runs from roughly 4:30 through 4:55. Once he says “So that clearly wasn’t gonna work,” you’re clear to watch again.) I was fine with it, but your mileage may vary.

Note the misdirection (several kinds) near the end.

See also: Wikipedia’s account of this feat, which more or less matches up with what Blaine says…but is itself a potentially untrustworthy source. Probably credible: John Tierney’s final NYT piece on the breath-holding record.

Disclaimer: DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME. You may attempt talking kinda goofy mumbly Blaine-style if you wish, but not the breath-holding stuff.

Some animals have it made. Their whole day revolves around eating and having sex (and, to be fair, trying not to get eaten themselves). And when winter arrives, they get to curl up somewhere and wait things out until the weather is nice again. Can humans get in on this hibernation thing?

Bear image via Shutterstock

First, a note on the lingo. While people often use the term loosely to refer to any state of dormancy in animals, true hibernation is a pretty specific thing characterized by “profound reductions in metabolism, oxygen consumption and heart rate.”

(more…)

If you’re not washing it, then yeah, it can get kind of gross. Reusing an unwashed bottle or cup, even if you’re “only” drinking water out of it, puts your mouth in intimate contact with a wonderful bacterial breeding ground.

Bacteria grow really well in moist, warm environments. While almost any similar container will suffice, a narrow-mouthed plastic water bottle is difficult to scrub and especially friendly to bacterial growth. In a 2003 study, Canadian researchers collected samples from children’s water bottles and found that almost two-thirds contained bacterial contamination that exceeded safe drinking water guidelines. While the study couldn’t pinpoint the source of the contamination, the researchers thought that the bacteria most likely simply made the leap from the students’ hands to the bottles and set up shop.

(more…)

Lab image via Shutterstock

Trauma, that’s what. It’s the smell of chemical defenses and first aid. The fresh, “green” scent of a just-mowed lawn is the lawn trying to save itself from the injury you just inflicted.

(more…)